1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning device for contact lenses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to clean a contact lens, in general, the contact lens taken off of a naked eye is held by the palm of a hand or the tip of finger, and is cleaned by dropping a cleaning liquid on its surface, followed by rubbing the contact lens with the tip of the finger. Dirt (particularly fat contained in tears) stained on the surface of a contact lens is thereby removed. After removal from the tip of the finger, the contact lens is rinsed with a rinsing liquid such as distilled water or the like. Thereafter, it is sterilized by boiling it in a preserving liquid such as a physiological saline solution or the like. After sterilizing, the contact lens is preserved in a preserving solution such as a physiological saline solution until the next morning.
Recently, as a cleaning device for contact lens, there have been developed an ultrasonic wave cleaner which cleans the contact lens with ultrasonic waves, and a cleaner which operates by a method of rubbing the surface of the contact lens in an elastic tray while manually holding the elastic tray.
However, there has been a problem that the cleaning of the contact lens could not be carried out efficiently by finger rubbing as aforementioned because, for example, dirt from the finger stains the surface of the contact lens. In the ultrasonic cleaner and the cleaner using the elastic tray system, even though they have the advantage that the contact lens need not be rubbed by a finger during cleaning, they cannot efficiently clean the contact lens. Particularly in case of a soft contact lens, the dirt on the surface of the contact lens cannot be entirely removed even if ultrasonic cleaning is carried out because it is formed of a soft material.
Furthermore, in a cleaner of the above ultrasonic system and a cleaner of the above elastic tray system, they are merely intended for cleaning the lens. For that reason, in case either rinsing or heat sterilizing of the contact lens must be performed after cleaning it, the lens has to be moved to another place or another device while holding the contact lens with the fingers, and dirt from the fingers may then stain or damage the contact lens. As a result, known techniques are still insufficient to efficiently execute the cleaning of the contact lens.
Therefore, the development of a cleaning device for contact lens which automatically performs a cleaning process, a rinsing process and a boiling process such as described above and which overcomes the above drawbacks is required.